The Metro Board of Directors held their September meeting today. Here’s the agenda. The full recap will be posted here.
Among the actions taken by the Board:
• Unanimously approved round two of SR-710 North Corridor Mobility Improvement Projects, which would see the development and implementation of additional corridor mobility improvement projects (MIPs) on local arterials and local freeway interchanges in the SGV area. There was extensive public comment on this item, and Directors Mike Bonin and Robert Garcia expressed concerns about whether the projects follow the Complete Streets policy.
• Received and filed the Understanding How Women Travel report. The next step is to develop a Gender Action Plan, which would ensure the agency’s policy, programs and activities include a gender perspective and promote the considerations of gender issues at all levels.
• Received an update on the Expo Line — an additional train has been added during ‘peak of peak’ hours, and Metro CEO Phil Washington stated his intention to work with cities to implement “complete signal preemption,” which would speed up the Expo Line’s travel times in street-level portions of the line. The Expo Line currently stops at 30 signals. Director Mike Bonin said he would introduce a motion next week at City Council about signal preemption.
• Awarded contracts to begin congestion pricing feasibility study. WSP USA, Inc. was awarded a $3+ million contract for the study’s technical services, and Guidehouse LLP was awarded a $1.9 million contract to help engage the public throughout the study. As part of the feasibility study, Metro will add experts in road usage charging, mobility pricing and equity to its existing Policy Advisory Committee. The study will also include the specific upgrades to public transit and first/last mile solutions that will be necessary to accompany any proposed pricing concept.
Categories: Transportation News
All you should be focused on is SAFELY getting people to and fro ON TIME. But no matter how many complaints are submitted, nothing changes. Stop with the “studies” and fix the problems you know exist! Metro riders are constantly late for work, ride perilously at night (& now during the day), and are subjected to drivers who simply don’t care. You say you want to encourage more to take Metro, but until we see changes and actual results, we will continue to doubt your sincerity.
This might be the most worthless meeting by a transit board ever.
Congestion pricing which a complete crock and double tax to satisfy the doomed 28 by 28 plan which is becoming evermore clear is impossible to achieve with California asinine laws and regulations. This is insane. It will burden the poor and working class assuming they want to take a train giving no alternative yet the double standard of the gender study malarkey, which I’ll address separately, is an issue worth discussing. Wow.
Then the 710 fiasco. Monies which were promised to go towards a tunnel were pulled under the feet of voters and redirected. More politicians screwing over voters. A very important project canceled being hailed as a victory while other cities like Madrid, Sydney, and Melbourne(along with countless others) are building freeway tunnels that make this 8 mile tunnel look like a horse and pony show. Very depressing and now the road based projects being attacked by a council member(mike bonin) who is doing a horrible job at managing his own district wants to stick his nose anywhere and everywhere he can. He’d be a good replacement for Garcetti and seeing how LA thinks it’s a good idea to keep re-electing that guy it wouldn’t surprise me to see him mayor one day.
Call me insensitive but why I’m the world do we need to know how women commute? Each commuter has their own needs and dividing commuting patterns like gender and race seems counterintuitive to integration. This seems like a scheme to score political brownie points and exploiting serious issues with no real outcome. How about we look at a commuters with no further labels added? I guess that makes me a sexist suggesting that.
Oh, and onto the makeshift solution to the expo line. This makes me madder than I can say in this message without running the risk of being banned here. So a train that was already built in a half arsed fashion seeing good ridership has its frequencies reduced at its highest usage hours. Then the same agency who reduced the trains adds a single train and pats themselves on the back!?!? Are you freaking kidding me!?
Wow this agency is worse off than I thought. IMHO, this entire agency should be disbanded and rebuilt from the ground up with real transit advisers and not politicians out to do their personal bidding. God help California.
If 30 stop lights are eliminated , how much running time is saved and at what cost?
Why is this not mentioned in your recap of today’s Metro Board meeting? https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2019-09-25/south-bay-cities-transportation-tax-internet
This is exactly why I vote NO on any transportation measures! This is a gross misuse of funds earmarked for building/expanding transportation in Los Angeles. Metro should be ashamed of themselves!
Thanks for the link. I just waited the better part of an hour for the only east-west line within miles of my house, then had to choose between standing in the aisle or waiting another hour in the hopes that the next (Line 130) bus would have an available seat. Why can’t “transportation funds” actually be spent on transportation?
That’s a good question. They seem to have no issue letting people know they want to know how a specific gender moves about and make sure those that care about that “issue” are ignorant on them expanding internet infrastructure. A better and more plausible scenario is they know many don’t care about that. I better quiet down before I’m accused of ‘mansplaning.’
The south bay is woefully underserved just like south central but hey let’s fund an internet line there. Hmmmm, maybe with the 710 monies being used to repaint roads there might just be enough money for metro to build a streetcar there that takes longer to travel from point a to b than walking. We will just ignore the plethora of inequality issues there and call it good since we now know how women, not men, move throughout the region.